Maronite leaders sign a document to 'move on towards new horizons in their relations at the human, social, political and national levels'

Cardinal Bechara Rai with Sleimane Frangié, leader of the Marada Brigade, and Samir Geagea, former member of the Christian Phalange militia, on Nov. 14. (Photo by Aldo Ayoub/Handout via REUTERS)

Under the glare of national TV cameras, two former “enemy brothers,” heads of Maronite factions in Northern Lebanon that fought each other bitterly during their country’s civil war, shared a historic handshake on Nov. 14.

Sleimane Frangié, head of the Marada Brigade – formerly a militia group, now a political party – and Samir Geagea, formerly of the Christian Phalange militia – a former nationalist militia – reconciled after decades of deadly enmity.

From the late 1970s to 1990, their clans had violently opposed each other during Lebanon’s civil war.

“Since this reconciliation is taking place on a rainy day, this meeting is a source of good for Lebanon,” the country’s Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Bechara Raï, said.

He himself had come to seal the unprecedented peace deal in Bkerké, a large coastal town north of Beirut and see of the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate.

The highly symbolic exchange between Frangié and Geagea marked the turning of a bloody leaf in Lebanon’s history.

Phalangist commando

The enmity between their clans erupted on June 13, 1978 against the background of a family feud, when Sleimane Frangié’s father, mother, three-year-old sister and a score of other persons died in an attack by a Phalangist commando at Ehden, in the mountains of Northern Lebanon.

Sleimane, then a young boy, was not at the scene of the carnage, in which Samir Geagea had participated.

At the time, the operation seemed linked to an effort by former Phalangist leader Bachir Gemayel to unite all Lebanon’s Christian militias under his wing, whether willingly or by force.

After the wave of killings, Sleimane Frangié decided to quit school at the age of 17 and head up the Marada militia.

In 1991, he was elected to parliament and since then, he has served almost without a break as a legislator representing his family’s fief.

Samir Geagea, for his part, became the only “warlord” to have found himself behind bars: he spent 11 years in prison for the explosions and waves of killings perpetrated by his faction, but was freed in 2005 following a general amnesty decreed by Lebanon’s parliament.

Differences of opinion

While both men expressly stated that on this “day filled with emotion,” they did not wish to broach, at this stage, the purely political aspects of their possible collaboration, they remain deeply divided on many issues.

Their two clans have diametrically opposed positions on relations with the Syrian regime.

Sleimane Frangié is a childhood friend of Bachar Al Assad. In 1976, at the start of the civil war, his grandfather had called for intervention by the Syrian army in the country.

Samir Geagea, on the other hand, has always been fiercely opposed to the regime in Damascus. At the time of his incarceration, his supporters had denounced “a Syrian plot”, accusing the Alawite Government of wishing to remove him from the political scene.

Turning the page

Each camp appears to have paid a high price for the civil war. For years now, the patriarch had been working to bring them together, an effort begun in May 2011 around former head of State Amin Gemayel and President Michel Aoun, then leader of the Free Patriotic Movement - a political group calling for various reforms.

“We are meeting today to pursue the path of internal unity,” Cardinal Raï said. “If we must speak of bipartisanship in Lebanon, there is only one: two equal, complementary wings, Muslims and Christians.”

Under his aegis, the two Maronite leaders signed a document confirming “their joint will to turn the page of the past and move on towards new horizons in their relations at the human, social, political and national levels” for the years to come.

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